Johnny saw a way through.

‘Actually I’m looking for his sister,’ he said.

One of Bigmac’s friends sniggered.

Bigmac took Johnny’s arm and led him a little way off.

‘What’d you come up here for?’ he said. ‘You could’ve asked me tomorrow.’

‘It’s . . . important.’

‘Bigmac! You coming or what?’

Bigmac glanced over his shoulder.

‘Can’t,’ he said. ‘Got to sort out something else.’

One of the kids said something to the other one, and they both laughed. Then they got into the car. After a little while it started up, bumped up on to the pavement and off again, and then accelerated into the night. They heard the tyres screech as it turned the corner on the wrong side of the road.

Bigmac relaxed. Suddenly he was a lot less tough, and a bit shorter, and more like the amiable not-quite-thicko Johnny had always known.

‘Didn’t you want to go with them?’ said Johnny.

‘You’re a right nerd, aren’t you,’ said Bigmac, in a friendly enough voice.

‘Wobbler says you have to say dweeb now, not nerd,’ said Johnny.

‘I usually say dickhead. Come on, let’s go,’ said Bigmac. ‘ ’Cos there’ll probably be some unhappy people around here pretty soon. ’S their own fault for leaving a car here.’

‘What?’

‘Dweeb. You don’t know nothing about real life, you.’

‘It’s just games,’ said Johnny, half to himself. ‘All different sorts. Bigmac?’

Somewhere away in the distance a car horn wailed, and was suddenly cut off. Bigmac stopped walking. The breeze blew his T-shirt against him, so that ‘Terminator’ was superimposed on a chest that looked like a toast rack.

‘What?’ he said.

‘Look, have you ever wondered what’s real and what isn’t?’

‘Bloody stupid thing to wonder,’ said Bigmac.

‘Why?’

‘Real’s real. Everything else isn’t.’

‘What about . . . well, dreams?’

‘Nah. They’re not real.’

‘They’ve got to be something. Otherwise you couldn’t have them, right?’ said Johnny desperately.

‘Yeah, but that’s not the same as really real.’

‘Are people on television real?’

‘ ’Course!’

‘Why’re we treating them as a game, then?’

‘You mean . . . on the News—’

‘Yes!’

‘That’s different. You can’t have people going around doing what they like.’

‘But we—’

‘Anyway, space games aren’t real,’ said Bigmac. He kept looking down the dark street.

Johnny relaxed a little.

‘Are you real?’

‘Dunno. Feel real. It’s all crap anyway.’

‘What is?’

‘Everything. So who cares? Come on, I’m going back home.’

They strolled past what had been, in 1965, an environmental green space and was now a square of dog-poisoned earth where the shopping trolleys went to die.

‘Plonker’s a bit of a maniac,’ said Bigmac. ‘Bit of a wild man. Bit of a loony. Lives in a big posh house, though.’

‘Where?’

‘Oh, in Tyne Avenue or Crescent or somewhere,’ said Bigmac.

A blue light lit his face for a moment as a police car flashed past the end of the road, its siren dee-dahing into the distance.

Bigmac froze.